Online portals deliver scary health news before doctors can weigh in

More Americans are learning of devastating health diagnoses through their phones and computers instead of personally from their doctors because of a federal requirement that people receive immediate access to medical test and scan results, from routine bloodwork to MRIs.

This shift has sparked a debate in the medical community about whether instant information empowers patients or harms them.

The new medical landscape resulting from a bipartisan law promoting transparency has exposed fault lines in a stressed health-care system where the promises of technological advancements are undercut by the heavy workloads foisted on medical professionals.

As more people receive troubling results online at the same time as their doctors—often waiting days or weeks for treatment plans—medical associations have been pushing to give doctors more time to release records revealing cancer and other grim diagnoses so patients don’t have to bear the news alone.

The idea of medical transparency undergirding provisions in the 2016 Cures Act is broadly supported. But implementation of the regulations expanding access to medical records, which took effect in 2021, has been more divisive.

Congress has taken little interest in this issue, and federal health officials have stood by the rules, arguing that concerns will be resolved as technology improves and as medical practices adjust how they prepare patients for results.

“There is just a moral imperative here, which is for patients, this is their information. They ought to be able to access it whenever they want,” said Micky Tripathi, the national coordinator for health information technology whose office crafted the requirement for the Department of Health and Human Services. “They also pay for it. They ought to be able to get things they pay for.”

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Source: Washington Post, 26 July 2024